Blunt's 'Shark Tank' initiative unleashes private sector ingenuity on pandemic

The "Shark Tank" initiative put forward by U.S. Senators Roy Blunt and Lamar Alexander is underway, and if the plan goes as intended it could play a significant role in the fight against the novel coronavirus.

Blunt (R-Mo.), who chairs the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (Labor/HHS), spoke with me Friday about the effort to couple private sector ingenuity with federal government backing.

Two different pieces of legislation signed into law, including the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act, are funding the "Shark Tank" approach to the tune of $1 billion. The initiative is named after the popular ABC series that features entrepreneurs who pitch business ideas to "shark" investors.

The Blunt and Alexander initiative is designed to solicit ideas to address coronavirus that fall under one of three categories: testing, therapeutics or vaccine.

While in most venture capital cases the investor wants to minimize failure, in this case the senator said if we're not experiencing some level of failure then we're not fully exhausting all the potential ideas to address the virus.

"I was at the White House yesterday meeting with the team they've put together internally to deal with this, Sen. Alexander from Tennessee and I were, and you know, our view was that we want to be sure that they understand that we're prepared to tolerate some failures here," Blunt said. "That if we don't have some failures, we're probably not pushing the envelope as much as we need to. And the whole concept of the 'Shark Tank' is to have people, largely it's going to be research laboratories and medical groups, but even individuals come to the 'Shark Tank' with ideas."

By casting a wide net, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) group will filter the ideas in a way that allows the United States to move quicker on medical breakthroughs than we otherwise would, Blunt said, adding solutions that go forward would be ready 30 or 60 days earlier than they would otherwise.

"This is a case where the difference in something that's available mid-August is dramatically better than something that's available that solves one of your three problems in mid-September. And mid-September is better than mid-October would have been," he said.

The senator said NIH has already had 1,087 applications in the week it has been accepting applications.

Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of NIH, is leading the 'Shark Tank.' Along with medical experts, the panel will include business experts who understand the production side of operations.

Blunt believes there will be a lull in the virus over the summer, but cautions a second wave is likely in the fall.

"I think we won't truly walk away from this and begin the process of returning to where we were until there's a vaccine and people say, 'I got the vaccine. I'm now virtually certain I can't possibly get this, and that means I can't possibly give it to anybody.'"

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, has said we would set a U.S. record if a vaccine is developed in 18 months. The President has set a goal by the end of the year.

"I wouldn't say it's going to happen, but I think it's possible that we have a vaccine widely available by sometime around the first of next year, sometime in December (2020) or January of next year, which would be a wonderful result if that could be the result," Blunt said.

The senator is hopeful the federal government would have joint partnership efforts underway through the "Shark Tank" by July 4.

Blunt said another stimulus bill is possible, but he would like to see the full affect of what has already been passed by Congress and signed by the President before jumping on board with another round of federal spending.

"I just think the circumstances are so different from anything we've seen before and changing so rapidly, that at some point we need to step back," Blunt said. "And what we might decide is, well, we absolutely need to continue to do everything we did to try to keep hospitals in business. But here's how the Paycheck Protection Program, there's already a lot of discussion, well, maybe too much of that goes to paychecks and not enough of it goes to other things it would take to keep the business open. I don't know if that's the right discussion or not, but I heard a lot of that this week."

He offered that maybe the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) should be adjusted from 75% payroll to 50% payroll.

Blunt said that he doesn't believe the U.S. has reached its peak unemployment from the pandemic. The most recent economic figures show unemployment was at 14.7% in April. Though concerned about debt the country is accumulating, he said stabilizing our economy with spending today would be better for future generations than allowing the economy to collapse.

Blunt also serves on the president's task force on reopening the economy. His contributions have so far been around education and health care, including mental health.

He said the lockdown coupled with people losing their jobs has led to a spike in bad habits such as opioid use.

"I think on the last couple of months, all the evidence would be that it's on the way up," the senator said. "And part of my advice has been, we've got to be paying attention to these things, as well as we pay attention to how we get the economy started and, you know, bonding ability for state and local government to borrow money at low interest rates for a long time to meet some of their revenue shortfall."

He's also bullish on the president's stated goal of infrastructure spending, particularly at a time when interest rates are low.

"I'm closer to where the President is on that than I think many of my colleagues are," he said. "We're going to wind up spending some money we don't have here to try to get the economy started. And if we're going to spend money we don't have, I'd like to spend as much as we could on something we really need. I think a big infrastructure package would be a great economic generator. And I'm willing to talk about a pretty big number."

An infrastructure bill would not only be good for the country, he said, but it would have a particularly important contribution to Missouri which he called a "hub of the important transportation network system of the country." He said broadband internet access should be included.

Sen. Blunt provides a realistic perspective to our national policy while upholding basic conservative principles. His 'Shark Tank' initiative is poised to play a significant role in our recovery. And quite frankly, it would be good to see this type of approach in other areas of government. Unleash the private sector and fund the best ideas to solve national challenges.

Lucas Presson is assistant publisher of the Southeast Missourian.